


Coffee Date

by marathemara



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Procedures, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 03:32:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marathemara/pseuds/marathemara
Summary: Guildpact's Clinic setting, post-third Ravnica block. Jace promised Vraska he'd buy her coffee when it was all over. Now it's all over, and Esther's clinic just might be the only place that still has coffee.





	Coffee Date

Esther didn't know how long she’d been working for.  
  
The clinic had long since overflowed the bed space in the old boardinghouse. Most of the patients lay under tents in the street, or domes of white magic that kept the smoke at bay.  
  
At least she wasn't alone in taking care of them. Most of her staff had stayed because they had nowhere else to go. Zofia was inside somewhere, working on new equipment to diagnose and treat injuries faster. And her panicked psychic broadcast...days?...ago, along with Mihail's friendship with the family who printed the newspaper, had brought in help from all over the city.   
  
Selesnya had come, at least the splinter faction of Selesnya that trusted her nurses and did not celebrate the destruction of the city, and worked alongside some of Simic's best surgeons. Azorius had come, since after all that had happened Esther was still a Lyev peacekeeper, and lent their magic to keep the air clean and the patients anesthetized. Boros had come, and patrolled the edges of the clinic where the fighting and rioting continued, and occasionally picked up injured rioters and dumped them unceremoniously in the triage queue. Even an agent of the Dimir had materialized with a satchel of potions, and Esther had interrogated her for what felt like hours, until she was certain that she could trust her, and that she knew what all the potions were well enough for the staff to duplicate them.  
  
One potion in that bag had kept her and Zofia and the senior staff on their feet all this time. It knocked you unconscious for fifteen minutes at a stretch, and filled that gap with nightmares of falling through the void between planes, of the Elder Dragon's arrival and all the chaos he'd caused, of being a cat that ran into the street and got hit by a carriage. Esther would wake from these dreams in a panic, then see Zofia sitting across the electrical table from her, and remember that she was alive and relatively well and had work to do, and have just enough time to kiss her wife and eat an egg bun that one of the urchins had brought from the bakery that was somehow still open and pour herself a cup of tea to take back to the triage queue.  
  
At one of those just-awake times, when she stumbled back to the head of the queue to relieve the Simic apprentice who she'd been training to diagnose unmodified beings, there was a great deal more jostling in the queue than usual. A human in blue robes pushed past, half-carrying a gorgon in what had once been the finest fungal dress Esther had ever seen. They paused at the rope that marked the front of the queue, and the human pushed back his hood with his free hand and looked Esther in the eye. "You're the doctor?" It wasn't a question; or rather, it was more than a question. Little blue things brushed the barriers at the edges of Esther's mind, a mind mage greeting that carried all the information he wanted to give about who he was.  
  
It was enough to bump him to the front of the line, but Esther wasn't so sure about his guest. “Guildpact? Are you harmed?”  
  
"Not me," he snapped. Esther considered offering him some of her sleep drink. "It's Vraska."  
  
Vraska. The controversial conqueror of the Golgari Swarm. There had been rumors, stories that Esther had never really had time to process and form an opinion of, that the collapse of the guilds and the arrival of the Elder Dragon had been her fault. "Why--"  
  
"I promised I'd buy her coffee," the Guildpact said, "and I can't do it if she's not healed."  
  
Esther rolled her eyes. Still, a Lyev was a Lyev, and if she couldn't at least pretend to uphold the symbols of order in these troubled times..."As you say, Guildpact. Let's get her inside. Sergei, keep sorting."   
  
The Simic elf opened his mouth to protest, gills flapping weakly, but Esther swept past him, leading the Guildpact and his charge into the clinic proper, and he took his seat again. His relief would be here in an hour anyway, and then maybe he'd get some sleep.  
  


* * *

Esther led Jace into what had been the clinic's break room, and before that the boardinghouse's dining hall. Now it was Zofia's workshop. The walls were lined with machines whose purpose Esther had forgotten, though they were certainly medical; and at the center, manned by Zofia and a rotating staff of Izzet defectors, was the electrical table with its rings of circuitry and inexplicable connection to the newspaper printing press in the corner.  
  
A voice behind Esther said "Coffee? Wait...Jace??" Esther turned around just in time to see Vraska faint and the Guildpact barely manage to catch her.  
  
Zofia hurried over as her assistants eased another patient off the table and gave them to a pair of Selesnya elves, members of the original clinic staff, along with a half-sheet of paper from the printing press. She and Esther exchanged weary smiles; even with the sleep drink you never really stopped being tired. "Who's next?" she asked.  
  
"The Guildpact brought in a priority patient. Looks like broken bones, maybe a concussion. Got time to take a look?"  
  
"We've got nothing but time, Doctor." Zofia tried hard to sound flippant, and hoped she wouldn’t lose her sense of humor entirely before this was all over. Her assistants took the gorgon off the Guildpact's hands and eased her onto the electric table.  
  
The Guildpact was at a loss. His mind bombarded Esther's with questions. She sighed. "Have a seat, sir," she said, and waved at the bench next to the electric table. "They're going to find out what's wrong with her and fix it. That's going to take a few minutes. Meanwhile," she sat down next to him and took a bottle of sleep drink out of her pocket, "you're going to drink this." _It'll make you less tired_ , she thought at him as she poured out a capful.  
  
The Guildpact considered the offer for a moment, then seemed to realize how tired he was. He took the cap and drank its contents all at once. "How long does it--" he asked, and then he was asleep.  
  
Esther took the cap back before he could drop it and put the bottle away. His fingers twitched. She wondered what his nightmares were like, and decided they couldn't be any worse than hers He was a planeswalker too, after all.  
  
The table whirred to life, thin lines of light running down the sides and along the rings. Zofia sat down next to Esther and held her hand while the assistants did their work, pulling levers, tweaking dials, and inking the printing press. When all the movement finally stopped, a goblin handed Esther a piece of paper with printing on it. It described Vraska's condition almost exactly as Esther had diagnosed it, with the addition of a psychic anomaly that suggested altered memories.  
  
Esther would have to ask the Guildpact about that when he woke up. Zofia and her assistants handed Vraska off to a pair of nurses; Esther gave them the paper, and they were off.  
  
"Room three," Zofia muttered on her way past Esther to the next patient. "So he can be there for her."  
  
"When's your next break?" Esther asked.  
  
"Hour and a half. You can watch me sleep."   
  
Esther nodded. *Can't wait till we get our bed back.*  
  
*At least you'll be there when I wake up.*  
  
*Love you too.* Esther checked on Jace briefly, then settled down to meditate, with a single thread of thought set to alert her when he woke up.  


* * *

It didn't take long. The thread snapped, and Esther opened her eyes to find the Guildpact blinking at her. "What happened? Where is she?"  
  
Esther shook her head. "I'm gonna give you a minute before I answer that. Sleep juice can be tough, especially the first time."  
  
"You don't get it," the Guildpact insisted. "I dreamed she was--"  
  
Esther cut him off, stopping his voice with a spell she'd learned for dealing with unruly patients. "Guildpact, please. You may be the ruler of this entire city, and I have given you the respect due the ruler of the city. However, if you think I'm going to let you raise your voice in _my_ clinic and panic _my_ patients..." She let the implied threat hang there until he cleared his throat and nodded. "I'm glad we understand each other. Now, your girlfriend is upstairs in surgery. You can go see her if you promise not to shout. Are we clear?"  
  
The Guildpact nodded again, and thought at her: _I promise_. Esther un-silenced him and stood up. "Right this way, Guildpact."  
  
Half the queue stared as they made their way upstairs. Esther noticed but didn't especially care. Even if he did rule the city, there was no time for him to be a disruption.  
  
She knocked on the door of room 3, and they waited. A healer opened the door. "We're almost done, Doctor," they said. "Just bringing her around."  
  
"Can I bring him in?" Esther said, nodding at the Guildpact. "There were some memory anomalies in her reading. We wanted her to have a friendly face when she woke up."  
  
The healer blinked, surprised by the request, then took another look at the Guildpact. "Of course. Come in."  
  
Esther leaned against the wall by the door. The Guildpact rushed over to the bed, brushing off the nurses' attempt to keep him at a safe distance as Vraska opened her eyes.  
  
Esther didn't hear what she said to the Guildpact, or how he answered. The one word she did pick out was "coffee."  
  
"Can she have coffee?" she asked the healer under her breath.  
  
"Depends," they said. "If you're making a fresh pot, that should be enough time. Bring some for us too."  
  
"I'll send a runner," Esther said. "Good work, all of you."  
  
"Thank you, Doctor."  
  
Esther closed the door to room three behind her and headed downstairs. Time to get back to fixing the world.


End file.
